Known locally simply as "The Brook", it was branded with the name "The House of Pain", due to its reputation as a difficult venue for visiting rugby teams.

It is also the former home of Otago cricket, which moved to the University Oval at Logan Park in the north of the city after its redevelopment in the early 2000s.

[3][4] It was also the home ground of Otago United in the New Zealand Football Championship, which moved to the lower-capacity Sunnyvale Park for the 2008–09 season.

[6] Partly due to Dunedin's relatively large number of tertiary students (20,000 of the city's 120,000 population), Carisbrook had a unique atmosphere.

[8] On 9 August 2006, a proposal was announced that would see Carisbrook retired and a 30,000 capacity covered stadium built in Dunedin North, close to other major sporting facilities such as Logan Park and the University Oval.

A later test match, destined to be the last at the ground, was scheduled between New Zealand and Fiji as a fundraiser for the Christchurch earthquake appeal on 22 July 2011.

The corporate box stand, which was only 14 years old, was always designed to be dismantled for use elsewhere, and there are proposals to move parts of the structure to University Oval and some to Queenstown's Stadium.